Traditional shaft sinking operations are carried out by drilling and blasting to excavate materials from a hole and removing the excavated material using a mucking system. The mucking system picks up the excavated material and deposits that material in buckets or kibbles that are hoisted to the surface on cables or fixed guides running to headgear incorporating a hoist at the top of the mineshaft. The mineshaft may extend downwardly from the earth surface, or may be a winze.
Bucket or kibble systems are useful in drilling and blasting shaft sinking processes since progress of the shaft is made in discrete/incremental steps. For example, a 3 to 4 (or greater) meter depth is drilled and blasted in the base of a mineshaft, a mucking system and operator are then lowered to the blasted rock and buckets or kibbles are lowered to the shaft bottom to be loaded by the mucking system. The buckets or kibbles are lowered to the shaft bottom on ropes or cables. While ropes or cables can be used to dictate the general direction of travel of the buckets or kibbles (i.e. upward or downward), they do not ‘guide’ the buckets or kibbles as lateral movement and rotation are still possible.
Once all of the blasted rock has been removed, the operator, mucking machines and buckets or kibbles are removed and the drill and blast process repeats.
More recently there have been proposals to increase the speed at which sinking can progress by using earth boring machinery. International patent publication number WO 2011/000037A1 discloses such a proposal for sinking a mineshaft.
Unless context specifies otherwise, the term “guide” as used herein refers to a member along which a conveyance travels down a mineshaft, and that resists or prevents rotation of the conveyance and lateral movements of the conveyance relative to the mineshaft. Such a “guide” provides no motive or drive force to cause movement of the conveyance.